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Comments Inline correcting oversights in PowerST product claims:
<<In fact, I believe that PowerST is the **ONLY** product on the market
which
has the ability to program money management rules. >>
OOPS! forgot one! TraderWare allows you to custom program any combination of
entries and exits and any type of money management rules in a programming
language called VB, instead of C++.
<<+) Since PowerST also contains a full trading rules programming
environment,
it can work standalone (although, yes, this is currently limited to end of
day data).>>
TraderWare contains a full trading rules programming environment that works
standalone, and can do tests on virtually any type of data you choose,
including daily, hourly, intraday X minute, intraday X tick, X Second. In
addition you can test your systems by themselves, or you can display them on
charts, program them to trigger alerts in the alert window, etc.
<<so you will never be able to get away from export/import.>>
TW allows you to test on data that you store in UMDS, or data that you
request from Quote.com without doing any import / export. You can also
program it to read data from a text file, or to get data from the internet
and use that data to test your systems off from.
<<Especially when getting into actual trading, traders seem to want as much
automation as possible, which PowerST is very good at with the ability to
define portfolios of markets and generate trade signals for portfolios of
markets. >>
Indeed traders want automation, which is why TraderWare allows you to test
baskets of securities and baskets of symbols just by making a couple of
clicks. TW also comes with a built-in portfolio tool which can be set to
automatically create a single portfolio equity curve from the combined
entries and exits of the individual systems, or to create individual equity
curves from the system results of each system on each symbol! In other words
you could test Dell, IBM and INTC on 5 separate systems and create a
combined equity curve, or create individual equity curves. Of course you
will need Excel 97 or higher to use this capability.
<<In a program which is only an add-on, export/import will be an
inconvenience forever.>>
That is too bad. There is no such inconvenience with TW.
<<Also, in addition to historical testing of money management strategies,
PowerST provides position sizes for new trades. >>
This is a nice capability. Custom position sizing and MM strategies could be
programmed into TW.
<<+) You also have to evaluate the quality of the product in general.>>
This is definitely needed for new products. You can download a fully
functional TW demo off the TW web site.
<<The thing I can say as a fact is that some current PowerST users did
extensive marketplace searches of other products, and ended up choosing
PowerST for it's money management capabilities.>>
This may be true, but it is also true that at the time they did their
searches, TW was not publicly available.
<<PowerST is only a replacement for the **system testing** features of
TradeStation. And at this time it is only a replacement for the system
testing features of TradeStation for EOD data.>>
TW is currently a replacement for the entire TS platform, including system
testing on EOD and intraday data.
<<Let me also note that PowerST is not simply a **replacement** for the
system
testing features of TradeStation. It has some important system testing
features beyond what the TradeStation offers. For example, the ability to
test against actual commodity contracts processing rollovers as would be
done
in actual trading.>>
This is a nice feature. It is not built into the current TW, but could be
programmed in since TW contains an industry standard programming language,
VB.
<<Also, control over the accuracy of trade execution in
PowerST is more advanced than TradeStation.>>
Likewise for TW.
<<No other software offers the portfolio money management testing
capabilities
of PowerST.>>
There are some nice built in features in PowerST that aren't found in other
programs, including TW. TraderWare does allow you to custom program them in
so if you really want or need these custom money management capabilities you
can be a do it yourself-er and include it in with your systems. I have no
doubts that some 3rd party application will come along to fill this need (if
it really is demanded) in the future with TW. What cannot be done in TW
currently can be programmed in VB and integrated into TW - I don't know how
it works with PowerST - if it allows for add on modules or to what extent
the custom programming capability can extend the current product by creating
custom features not found in the shipping product. TW allows custom VB
programming while PowerST allows custom C++ programming.
The bottom line difference is that TW is a complete trading platform, while
PowerST is a complete EOD system testing platform. IOU, TraderWare is the
whole enchilada.
Which would you rather learn, Visual Basic, or the more arcane C++?
(assuming you don't already know either of these programming languages)
Also, TW is shipping for about $2,400, while PowerST comes in at $5,000
(more bang for the buck). I didn't see a money back guarantee on the PowerST
site.
Patrick White
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